First StarOffice malware sighted

Mostly harmless

Virus writers have created the first virus to affect StarOffice. Stardust uses macros to attack Sun's alternative office suite. The malware was written as a proof-of-concept code to show what might be possible rather than as a serious attempt to create a new attack vector.

Macro viruses usually infect Microsoft Office applications though the attack technique has fallen out of favour over the last couple of years as Trojans and botnet clients have grown in favour. VXers have reapplied the macro virus idea to create malware that messes with alternative office suites.

"Stardust is the first virus I know of which is theoretically capable of infecting StarOffice and or OpenOffice documents. It's written in Star Basic. It downloads an image file (with adult content) from the Internet and then opens this file in a new document," writes a virus researcher from Kasperky Labs on the firm's weblog.

The code uses an old API (application programming interface) but this might be easily modified to affect OpenOffice 2.0, the latest version of the open-source office suite, Infoworld reports. ®